Jimmy Olsen
by silverhelix428
Summary: Hesam is starting to get suspicious of Peter. He's not prepared at all for what he discovers about his partner and Emma. Mostly about Hesam, but features lots of adorable Pemma. Part Three of the Superman Trilogy.


**Title**- Jimmy Olsen  
**Author**- Victoria  
**Rating**- PG-13  
**Characters/Pairings**- Hesam, and referenced Pemma  
**Summary**- Hesam is starting to get suspicious of Peter. He's not prepared at all for what he discovers about his partner and Emma. Part Three of the Superman Trilogy.

**A/N**- I deemed it necessary to make Peter and Emma's relationship a very public one. Something tells me that Peter Petrelli is about as opposed to PDA as Jess Mariano was. Besides that, it's just funny if everybody gets really annoyed with them all the time.

* * *

It started out like any other day, for Hesam at least. He woke up and had a breakfast of cold cereal and a banana, then got ready for work. Despite the bad weather, he walked to work, as he lived only five minutes from Mercy Heights. On the way, he stopped at the Golden Bean and bought a soy latte to get his caffeine fix for the morning.

When Hesam arrived, his dark hair was slick with the moisture that had collected on his head as he'd trudged through the sleet to the hospital.

Peter smirked at the sight of him. "Should have brought an umbrella, man," he said smugly.

"Like you're ever any better," Hesam muttered. He was in a relatively good mood, but he couldn't help trading insults with Peter. It was just how things were. They were friends, but the younger man kept a careful distance from everybody, and the banter was the perfect way to do that.

Well, Hesam amended to himself, Peter kept a careful distance from _almost_ everybody. There was one notable exception to that rule: Emma Coolidge. Hesam was pretty sure that if he had to put up with any more of his partner's romantic crap any longer, he was going to go completely insane. The fact that they took quite literally every opportunity to make out in the halls of the hospital was bad enough, but it seemed to leave Peter dazed for hours afterward, and his distractability was getting on Hesam's nerves.

Though, now that he was on the subject, Peter had actually been acting weird for a couple of weeks _before_ he and Emma hooked up. The young paramedic had always been a little unpredictable, but this was different. He was always looking over his shoulder. And come to think of it, Hesam now realized, he had yet to see Peter do anything that actually resembled the job of an EMT this week, yet at least a dozen critical patients had arrived at the hospital with significantly lesser injuries than had been initially thought.

What was going on with his partner?

"Something wrong?" Peter asked a little uncomfortably, and Hesam realized he'd been staring at him unblinkingly for several minutes now.

He cleared his throat. "Yeah, fine," he said. "Just thinking about something. Let's get out there, huh?" But he resolved to watch the other man.

--

This was the worst luck imaginable, Hesam thought. The 911 call had gone out on an apartment fire some five minutes ago; he and Peter were first on the scene, and by the time they arrived, the whole building was ablaze. And, in some sick kind of irony, the paramedics had arrived before the fire department. In fact, though sirens could be heard in the distance, it was obvious that they weren't going to be here anytime soon.

Peter stared grimly up at the burning building. "There's someone still in there," he said quietly.

"You don't know that," Hesam said.

"There's someone still in there," he repeated firmly. Then, with a sigh, he sprinted toward the main entrance to the building.

Hesam yelled after him, "Peter, what are you doing? Seriously, man, are you insane?! Get back here!" But his partner completely ignored him. Typical Peter and his damn Messiah complex. "Shit," Hesam muttered, knowing full well what he was going to have to do. Peter was going to get into serious trouble in there if he knew him. Pausing only to pull a surgical mask over his mouth and nose in an attempt to protect himself from the smoke, he followed the very determined Peter into the blaze.

"What the hell?!?" he shouted. "Pete, c'mon man! Get out of here!"

But Peter had already disappeared up the smoking stairs, and Hesam followed, already knowing how utterly idiotic this was. He should just get out now, while he had a chance... But his feet, apparently, hadn't figured that out, because they were resolutely dogging Peter's footsteps.

When he reached the top of the stairs, coughing from the smoke, he found Peter standing there, staring around indecisively, apparently completely unphased by the smoke and fire all around them. "What the hell are you doing here, Hesam?" he asked.

"Coming to protect your sorry ass from getting killed!" he replied.

Peter grimaced. "You shouldn't... I can take care of myself," he said.

"Yeah, well, you were dumb enough to run into a burning building," Hesam snapped. "Doesn't exactly inspire confidence, you know? So what the hell are we doing?"

"There's a couple of kids," he said. "The last apartment on the left, okay?"

"How the hell do you know that?"

Peter sighed. "I don't have time to explain right now, but... look, just go find the kids."

Hesam knew time was of the essence- even in the few seconds they'd been standing here, the temperature had noticeably increased, and pieces of flaming plaster were starting to crumble from the ceiling, a sure sign that the superstructure of the building wasn't going to last much longer. Without bothering to reply, he ran down the hall to the door Peter had indicated, trying to ignore the fact that the soles of his shoes were starting to melt.

He touched the handle of the door-it was still cool. Good, there was no fire on the other side, at least not directly. He wrenched the door open, wooden shards falling about as the hinges popped out of the weakened wood. Hesam darted through the rooms, looking for the children Peter had told him about and still wondering why the hell he was doing this. Finally, he found two children, a boy and a girl both about six years old, huddling in a closet. He coaxed them out hastily, half-dragging the terrified boy after him.

When they reached the hall, he could see Peter gently escorting an elderly man out of a different apartment.

"Pete!" he called.

His partner looked around at him, and his eyes widened in horror. Hesam glanced up and saw that the burning beam above them was about to give way. Without really thinking, he pushed the children down on the scorched floorboards, sheltering them with his body even as he heard the splinter of wood over his head. He closed his eyes tight, hoping it wouldn't hurt too much... but the broiling weight he had expected to come crashing down on him never came.

He glanced upward... and he thought his jaw might actually hit the floor. Peter was standing over them, holding the obviously weighty flaming beam aloft in his bare hands.

"H-how--?" Hesam stuttered. "You were down at the other end of the hall...?"

"I'll explain later," Peter said tensely. "Right now we've got to get out. The whole building's about to come down, and I don't know if I'm strong enough to stop it."

"Right," he replied, recognizing even as he spoke that he was in shock. "Okay. Getting out of here. Good. Let's go." He helped the two children to their feet, and Peter returned to assisting the old man. Together, they managed to get the last of the tenants down the stairs and led them out into the sunlight that seemed both pale and unbearably bright after the intense glow of flames and thick smoke.

The other teams of paramedics had treated the majority of the other victims, and so it was up to him and Peter to deal with the three they had pulled from the fire. The old man had suffered severe smoke inhalation and Hesam deemed him to be in critical condition. However, Peter laid a hand on the man's chest and his breathing eased almost immediately. Peter, by contrast, turned shockingly pale for a moment. However, he recovered very quickly, and turned to attend to the children. They were somewhat better off, having only suffered minor burns where embers from the falling beam had landed on them. Their desperate mother arrived minutes later.

--

"So..." Hesam said awkwardly.

"Yeah."

They were in the ambulance, transporting the old man back to the hospital for observation. He seemed to have recovered miraculously quickly from his ordeal, but they could not in good conscience leave him in the care of his relatives just yet.

"So," Hesam tried again, meeting Peter's eyes in the rearview mirror, "I guess this explains how you always got to accident sights so fast."

"Yep. That about sums it up. But, uh, can we not talk about that right this very second? I promise I'll explain once we get back to the hospital, alright? Our shift is over anyway."

--

Peter knocked on the window of the file room- despite having restarted her residency, Emma was still sharing the space with the new file clerk, Chelsea. The knock was, of course, superfluous, but sometimes she would see the colors, and if she didn't, Chelsea would say something. Today apparently it would have to be the latter, because she was deeply engrossed in perusing a medical text.

Emma looked up when Chelsea threw her pen at her, and spotted Peter waving through the window. She leapt to her feet and slipped out of the file room. Peter never came into the room anymore, because Chelsea had banned them. To quote the black-haired young woman, "If I wanted to see that much tongue, I'd rent a porno." They obliged her by greeting each other _outside_ the file room. The exasperated file clerk pulled down the blinds before Emma had even reached him.

"Hi," he said, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her lightly on the lips.

She returned his kiss warmly. After a few more moments of bliss, he forced himself to end the kiss.

"Hesam found out about me," he said. "He knows about my powers."

Emma winced sympathetically. "How is he taking it?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said. "I haven't had much of a chance to talk with him yet. I was hoping, actually, maybe you would help me out with the explaining thing."

"I'd rather not," she said playfully.

"Please?" he begged. "I really don't want to do this myself. At least come along for emotional support." When Emma continued to look reluctant, he said, "I'll make it up to you."

Her warm brown eyes crinkled up in amusement. "I'll hold you to that," she warned.

"Of course you will," he said, grinning. "Thank you. He's waiting in the rec room."

--

"So you're... what, exactly?" Hesam asked.

"I guess you could think of it as... the next stage in human evolution," Peter explained.

Hesam still looked confused. "Think X-Men," Emma supplied helpfully.

"Great, so my partner is a mutant?" Hesam asked.

"Pretty much," Emma said. Peter just looked uncomfortable.

"And... what exactly can you do? Obviously you're super-strong, and apparently indestructible and impossibly fast," Hesam asked.

Peter pushed his hair out of his eyes, leaning forward. "That's sort of complicated," he said. "There are a lot of people like me and Emma out there--"

"Wait, you're like him too?"

Emma nodded patiently and Peter continued. "Anyway, all these people are enhanced in some way. Super-strength, super-speed... I once met a girl who could fire lightning out of her hands. My niece is immortal. A friend of ours is a time-traveler. It just depends. But as for me, I just acquire the powers of all the people I've ever met."

Hesam appeared to struggle with this information. "So... you've got _every_ power," he said. "Kinda like Superman?"

"I guess so," Peter said. "That's the analogy everybody else seems to apply to me." Emma glanced at him; his normally relaxed face was tense and his dark eyes were worried. Clearly he was on tenderhooks, waiting for Hesam to get past his shock to discover his true reaction to the revelation. She squeezed his hand comfortingly and he smiled his thanks to her.

After a few minutes of silence, during which Hesam digested the information he'd just been handed, he looked up at them. "So... if you're Superman..." he said slowly, "Does that make me Jimmy Olsen?"

The rec room of Mercy Heights Hospital rang with laughter.


End file.
